Bio

Matthew C. Waxman is adjunct senior fellow for law and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also professor at Columbia Law School and a member of the Hoover Institution's task force on national security and law.

He previously served at the U.S. Department of State as principal deputy director of policy planning. His prior government appointments included deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, director for contingency planning and international justice at the National Security Council, and special assistant to the national security adviser. He is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, and studied international relations as a Fulbright scholar in the United Kingdom. After law school, he served as law clerk to Supreme Court justice David H. Souter and U.S. Court of Appeals judge Joel M. Flaum.

Transition 2012

Civil liberties will present the winner of the 2012 U.S. presidential elections with challenges related to counterterrorism powers and practices, as well as challenges related to privacy rights, says CFR's Matthew C. Waxman.

Recent events in Darfur raise the familiar question of whether international law facilitates the kind of early, decisive, and coherent action needed to effectively combat genocide. Matthew C. Waxman argues that putting decisions about international intervention solely in the hands of the UN Security Council risks undermining the threat or use of intervention when it may be most potent in stopping mass atrocities.

All Publications

The expanded use of light-footprint warfare–including drones, cyber-operations, and Special Operations Forces–has established precedents constituting a remarkable legacy of presidential power to use military force, posing a distinctive challenge to U.S. democracy and military strategy ahead.

Recent terrorist attacks and resulting questions about the limits of surveillance have rekindled debate about how governments should deal with the challenges of powerful, commercially available encryption. With active debate in the United States and Western Europe surrounding this issue, it is instructive to note that Israel has been regulating encryption for decades.

Matthew Waxman reviews Charlie Savage’s new book Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency. Waxman writes about the ways in which Savage explains the different styles, and yet remarkable continuity, in foreign policy between President Obama and his predecessor, President Bush. Waxman notes that Savage’s novel contribution is the way he not only demonstrates the surprising continuity in their two foreign policies but in explaining the cause of that continuity.

The Philippines took China to international court in 2013 in order to challenge China’s assertion of vast maritime claims over the South China Sea. Matthew Waxman discusses why using international legal institutions in this way serves as a poor replacement for diplomacy and instead adds to both its complexity and set of instruments.

Matthew Waxman reflects on the international legality of the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), declared by China one year ago. Importantly, this zone includes a large area of the East China Sea, including islands the legal possession of which China disputes with Japan. Waxman discusses the somewhat ambiguous and developing legal field surrounding ADIZs in this particular context and beyond.

Ever since an international coalition led by NATO forces helped topple the regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011, governance there has been in shambles. Recently the fighting among rival militias has escalated dramatically, and there is no political solution on the horizon.

Matt Waxman shows that congressional influence operates more robustly—and in different ways—than usually supposed in legal debates about war powers to shape strategic decision-making. In turn, these mechanisms of congressional influence can enhance the potency of threatened force.

Matthew Waxman argues that debates about constitutional war powers neglect the critical role of threats of war or force in U.S. foreign policy. The recent Syria case highlights the President's vast legal power to threaten military force as well as the political constraints imposed by Congress on such threats. Incorporating threats into an understanding of constitutional powers over war and peace upends traditional arguments about presidential flexibility and congressional checks—arguments that have failed to keep pace with changes in U.S. grand strategy.

While the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has granted U.S. agencies broad legal authority to collect sensitive information, it is hardly a "rubber stamp" for government surveillance requests, says CFR's Matt Waxman.

As a matter of international law, humanitarian intervention—such as the use of military force to protect foreign populations from mass atrocities or gross human rights abuses—is permissible if authorized by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Although many Western governments have taken the position that such intervention may in some cases be morally justified even if not authorized by the Security Council, most states and international legal experts do not regard that as lawful.

When does a cyber-attack (or threat of cyber-attack) give rise to a right of self-defense – including armed self-defense – and when should it? This essay examines these questions through three lenses: (1) a legal perspective, to examine the range of reasonable interpretations of self-defense rights as applied to cyber-attacks, and the relative merits of interpretations within that range; (2) a strategic perspective, to link a purported right of armed self-defense to long-term policy interests including security and stability; and (3) a political perspective, to consider the situational context in which government decision-makers will face these issues and predictive judgments about the reactions to cyber-crises of influential actors in the international system.

The United States and the Future of Global Governance: The Use of Force and Accountability in International Law - A U.S. Perspective

SpeakersMatthew C. WaxmanAdjunct Senior Fellow for Law and Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations, John B. Bellinger IIIAdjunct Senior Fellow for International and National Security Law, Council on Foreign Relations, David J. SchefferProfessor of Law, Northwestern UniversityModeratorJeffrey ToobinStaff Writer, The New Yorker

The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and the American Red Cross hosted a discussion on the relevance and importance of international humanitarian law at a time when civil conflicts are erupting in North Africa and the Middle East. An audio recording of the event is also available.

On the New York Times' "Room for Debate" blog, Matthew Waxman joins other experts for a discussion of how admissions of torture might affect the closure of the Guantanamo military detention facility and the prosecution of detainees.

In a 2008 prepared testimony to the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission), Matthew Waxman discusses the legal and policy decisions regarding the future of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and the possibility of closing it down.